


premonition

by stirringwinds



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 1930s, Drabble, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Historical Hetalia, Historical References, Language, Politics, and liked what they saw, the house of windsor has loads of dirty secrets, there were certainly people in british high society who looked at 1930s germany
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 14:00:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17122697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stirringwinds/pseuds/stirringwinds
Summary: “Really, why’re you this stressed about his romantic flings, old man? Isn’t this the kind of shit they always get up to? This can’t even be in the top five of royal crisesyou’vepersonally experienced, honestly. No one’s even, like, getting their head chopped off.”Alfred is observant.As always.“So, are you still heading to Berlin?”London, 1936:Alfred pays his father a visit. A brewing royal crisis, and in continental Europe, all is not well.





	premonition

**Author's Note:**

> I've always enjoyed fleshing out Arthur and Alfred's relationship through a father/son dynamic in my art, and since I started writing more, they've become my favourites to write about. So, this is a sort of a quick snapshot of how I imagine Arthur and Alfred would view the ongoing developments in the 1930s. I hope to write more historical one-shots in this vein.

**_Buckingham Palace, London. 1936._**

 

Alfred’s perched on a baroque-style chair, munching noisily on a buttered scone. He’s dropping crumbs all over the antique furniture, but Arthur honestly can’t bring himself to care.

“Seriously, old man, what the fuck is all the fuss about? Aren’t you and your siblings a  _constitutional_  monarchy nowadays?”

He stares up sullenly at the gigantic, glittering crystal chandelier that looms above them from his position sprawled across a couch. Idly, he imagines it smashing to the ground and exploding into innumerable, brilliant shards.

“Yes.” At that monosyllabic reply, Alfred’s response is to stare down at his father sceptically, plate of scones in hand. He’d seized a generous helping from the leftovers of the King’s afternoon tea that a footman had been carrying away, with the forceful rationale that ‘ _dude, if he’s not gonna eat that shit, then someone should!_ ’

“So, who cares what the guy on the throne does or who he marries? He just has to smile and shit when opening Parliament or riding that garish golden carriage, right? Like, behind all that fanfare—he’s gotta actually  _listen_  to the Prime Minister, no?”

“‘ _Garish’_? Coming from  _you_?” Arthur smirks. Sighs. “Please. If only it were that simple. See, my monarch is  _also_  the Head of the Church of England. And marrying a divorcee whose spouse is still living is a major no-no.”

His son’s brows are raised. “Didn’t your Church get established because ‘ol Henry was hot for Kate’s lady-in-waiting and wanted to  _divorce_  her, but the Pope was like,  _fuck no_?  _Honestly_ —”

“—You are not incorrect,” Arthur says stiffly, before Alfred can launch into yet another scathing, republican critique of monarchies. All of which he was more than familiar with: he’d found several of them highly convincing when Victoria, melancholy over losing Albert, had shut herself off from the world and refused—  _for years—_ even to attend her public engagements. 

He feels a headache building. Why is he even having this conversation? Right, because Alfred was in the neighbourhood. For  _glad-handing_  and  _diplomacy_. In the name of international sportsmanship and whatnot.

“So, the  _monarch_  can be a divorcee but he can’t  _marry_  a divorcee?”

“Well,  _technically_ , it wasn’t a divorce. Henry had his marriage annulled on the basis that it was never valid to begin with, because Catherine had been his brother’s wife for a short time before he died. So Anne was his  _first_  proper marriage, in that sense.”

Alfred looks at him, unconvinced. ““Semantics. ‘Ol Henry’s a divorcee.” Wrinkles his nose at his father. “Anyway, don’t you think that you guys should, oh I don’t know,  _modernise_? This ain’t the 16th century anymore.”

Arthur had regrettably, laid eyes on several American tabloids that were embellishing the whole matter as an epic, star-crossed romance between an American girl and a king.

He fixes his eldest son with a bleary look. “A number of people here despise her. They do not think she is fit to be Queen. Constitutional monarchy? Quite right. But it’s still a powerful symbol in this land. And the monarch is privy to and entrusted with important, highly-confidential government information too. So, it matters what people think.”

Alfred’s finished his scones, and at a rather impressive pace too.

“Dude, that sounds like a  _complete_  pain in the ass. And I mean, all offense, to begin with, don’t you find this whole…institution of inherited privilege… _anachronistic_  as hell? That’s totally not how you find the best folks for the job!”

“Believe me, I am not alien to meritocratic and republican sentiments,” Arthur says drily. After all, in his view, the titled men and women who spent their time attending parties and leisurely living off the income of their large, inherited estates were by and large not the ones who had forged him into an industrial titan and modern world power.

Continues. “Honestly? I wish Bertie were King instead of David. The lad may stutter, but he’s  _sensible_  on the whole, unlike his brother. What do I need with a smooth-talking, but irresponsible monarch?”

Alfred’s eyes are alight with curiosity. They’re sharp and intelligent underneath the veneer of casual gregariousness his son normally donned. 

“Really, why’re you  _this_  stressed about his romantic flings, old man? Isn’t this the kind of shit they always get up to? This can’t even be in the top five of royal crises  _you’ve_  personally experienced, honestly. No one’s even, like, getting their head chopped off.”

His son is observant.  _Always has been_. “So, are you still heading to Berlin?”

“Yeah. The folks on my Olympic committee insisted. To soothe all those ruffled feathers over the proposed boycott,” Alfred rolls his eyes. “And don’t change the subject.”

“It  _is_  the subject. Since you’re going, then just keep your eyes open. I don’t like any of this but I’m well aware I’m not exactly in a position to lecture you given that we caved too. Don’t get distracted by all that pageantry and farcical bullshit, alright?”

The news announcing the reintroduction of German conscription last year hadn’t escaped his attention. It had weighed on his mind ever since. Some in Whitehall considered this neutral or even positive news.  _A bulwark against the hammer and sickle_ , they enthused. Of this group, some were simply ludicrously naïve and inexperienced. 

Others, Arthur had learned to watch his words and expressions around.  

“You don’t have to tell me that. I’m also going just so I can actually see things for myself. The main guy in charge of my committee keeps inundating me with glowing reports about the  _world-class sports facilities_ ,” Alfred mutters darkly.

Unlike him, Alfred is practically a natural at German, fluent in a number of its varieties—something his son credited to the huge numbers of German-speaking immigrants he’d absorbed. And Arthur knew well just how much people inadvertently revealed when they thought you didn’t understand.

His eldest son still hasn’t quite connected the dots. “But what’s all this got to do with your king and his romantic entanglements anyway?”

Arthur sits up and stares out of the window. It’s a maddeningly bright and clear summer day, at odds with the internal sense of foreboding he feels.

“To be honest, I don’t know what he and her are up to half the time. But there have been rumours. About their  _political inclinations_  and the kind of… _friends_  they keep.” Fixes his lips into a grim line.

It feels ill-omened even to speak the next few words. But he does, anyway.

“And if— _if_  it should come to us facing Germany once more—I don’t trust him  _one bit_  as King.”

**Author's Note:**

> (Thanks for reading—and sorry for the _long-ass_ historical notes. It's...a habit, admittedly.) 
> 
> [1] King Edward VIII was chiefly known to family members by his last given name, David. In the 1930s, he began a relationship with an American socialite, Wallis Simpson, and proposed to marry her in 1936. 
> 
> [2] The British monarch was—and still is—also the head of the Church of England. While matters have certainly liberalised with regards to divorce today, in the 1930s, Simpson’s status as a divorcee was an anathema to many members of the British establishment. Marriage was also opposed by the Prime Ministers of Canada, South Africa and Australia. Edward VIII eventually abdicated—stating that he could not be monarch without Simpson by his side.
> 
> [3] His younger brother, Albert, Duke of York, succeeded him, and his daughter Elizabeth became heir-apparent. Albert took on the regnal name of George VI to emphasise continuity with his father, George V, but was known as ‘Bertie’ to those close to him. He had a stammer, which he worked hard to overcome (as dramatised in The King’s Speech).
> 
> [4] The evidence that Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson were close to several high-ranking Nazis is too extensive to detail in whole here. But basically: after Edward VIII’s abdication, against the advice of the British government, the two went on a publicised tour to Nazi Germany in 1937, where they met many German political leaders, saluted SS cadets and were guests of Hitler at his private retreat, the Berghof. Simpson herself had apparently been romantically involved with Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s foreign minister. She later commented that France had fallen because it was ‘internally diseased’. Edward VIII had expressed antisemitic and other racist views prior—and during the war itself, made a number of comments sympathetic to the Nazi government and Hitler. After the war, the so-called Marburg files were discovered in Germany—which detailed German plans to install Edward VIII as monarch of a conquered Britain and contained reports by German agents about how Edward VIII had suggested that further bombing would make Britain amenable to peace with Germany. One interpretation by some is that they were simply dupes rather than fascist supporters. I personally take a far less generous view. To begin with, in the 1930s, pro-fascist views were not unheard of amongst British high society.
> 
> [5] The Nazi party came to power in Germany in 1933, and saw the opportunity to turn the 1936 Berlin Olympics into a massive, propaganda display that would boost the regime and soften international opinion in light of the disturbing news stories that were already emerging. In line with the regime’s ideology, several top German Jewish athletes were banned from competing.
> 
> [6] In response to the racism of the Nazi regime, an Olympic boycott was proposed in the United States, which would have sent an especially strong signal given that the Americans sent the largest contingent. Eventually, due to the efforts of the US Olympic committee chairman Avery Brundage, they voted to go. Brundage himself had made racist comments, and notably, his construction company was awarded the contact to build the new German embassy in Washington D.C.


End file.
